In the heart of a conqueror
by Just Slightly Obsessed
Summary: They were only ever after the same thing. It just took a broken heart for them to realise that. Non yaoi, T for swearing, America and Britain one-shot.


**I haven't even watched Hetalia properly yet, but I've seen enough of it to be able to write this. I've also seen enough of it to absolutely love it.**

**I'm a Brit myself, and recently, particularly through discovery of this anime, I've become fairly patriotic, but also have gained a love for America. It astounds me how the two countries can be so close when there's been so much anger between them in the past, and at the same time constantly mock each other. Hetalia does this really well, particularly the Revolutionary War scene which was the inspiration for this. I'm looking foward so much to really getting into this anime, not just for the humour, but for the new view it's giving me on everything. ****Needless to say, the gorgeous character personifications help too. If only every boy in England was like Arthur Kirkland... **

**So this is a non-yaoi one, possibly two-shot on the relationship between Britain and America. No offense is meant by any of this; if anyone is offended please let me know and I'll do my best to amend it because it really is not my intention. Also please tell me if the voice I'm using sounds too English, etc, etc.**

**Enjoy. I do not own Hetalia or the characters, though I claim Britain as my fatherland XD **

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><p>I was the luckiest child on Earth.<p>

That's what it looked like. That's what it felt like, in the beginning. The golden boy, fought over by countries, finally adopted by the strongest nation to ever grace the world, even stronger than the Roman Empire, and brought up not having to fight for my own place. I was taught by the best, I had been chosen by him to be the best of his prizes. His trophy.

From that sort of start, I reckon other countries often wonder why I ever left. Do they see me as ungrateful? Is that why they find it hard to respect me? Do they think I cheated somehow, by rising to the top by birthright and only having to defeat one man to become the top dog?

I was never aiming for top dog. I was aiming for freedom. It's what Britain never had when he was my guardian, never even thought of. Never let me have.

Britain. My brother, Britain.

From the first moment he formed, back thousands of years before I rebelled against him, he was a fighter. Never wanted to be conquered, not by Rome, not by France, not by anyone. Constantly fighting. Peace was rare, and even when peace was declared externally, inside he was raging against himself. He was cut off from everyone, different. Whether he was aiming for some sort of satisfaction, or whether he had no aim at all, I don't think anyone really knows. Personally, I think the former. His lot was bad; those abandoned islands, cold, rainy, nothing special, somehow every conquering nation's 'easy capture' – or so they assumed. He was sick of being the underdog, so he fought, madly, passionately, until...

What? The whole world was under his rule? I don't know. He didn't know. Chasing contentment, I think, chasing peace by declaring war. Needing security. Needing to prove his worth. The little islands that contained a world of rage.

And, in the middle of his storm to victory, he met me.

America. I was a promise to him, a promise of a new age which he was after, an age of peace, although he didn't realise it at the time. He took me from France, by force, as he did everything, and took care of me himself, made me civilised. I was his heir, his next in line. And he was everything to me.

I was lucky. I really was. My older brother, champion of the world, feared and envied by everyone, though many chose not to admit it. He treated me with love and respect, attending my every need. I adored him. I hardly realised that he had other adopted siblings. I didn't really care. He'd favourited me, he loved _me. _That's all children care about. I ran to him every time he came back from wherever he'd been, not even questioning why he was covered in blood.

As I grew up, he decided to show me his world, the world he lived in when he wasn't with me. He introduced me to the other nations, and for the first time I realised just who my brother was, how powerful he was. Whole countries shook in fear before him. He took what he wanted, whenever it suited him. He continued to crush his enemies in a blaze of fire, spread red, white and blue across the globe and look down upon it from his golden pedestal in London, holding me up to see it, and so they could see me. His rage was glorious and terrible and beautiful, and he shared every moment of it with me.

But he was almost bipolar. He often shielded this insanity which he released into his territorial exploits with courtesy, shielded it so well that it took me a long time to realise the mania he unveiled when at war was the true chaos within him. I didn't understand why even his allies feared him when he was so civil to them until I found myself on the other end of his astonishingly powerful glare, when I started to take my first steps towards becoming an individual nation. It terrified me, and made me question him even when I still only wanted to please him. How could this man, this strong, handsome, kind man, the model of everything a man should be, be so... so...

Eventually I came to believe that everything about him was a facade, couldn't understand how he could really care for me when he was treating other countries so cruelly. I saw his continuing dissatisfaction underneath his growing conquests and understood, privileged by my knowledge of him and his world, that his empire meant nothing to him. That I meant nothing to him.

So I pushed my emotions aside and told myself that he meant nothing to me either.

The rebellion was hard. Too hard, at times, the hardest thing I think I've ever done. The thing I have regretted the least. Fighting _for _something, for freedom, the first real steps towards peace, was a concept my brother could never grasp. He didn't understand what I was doing, why I'd turned against him, why I had joined his enemies to rebel. And as usual, what he didn't understand, he fought. He fought until I had him in the corner of a field, a gun aimed at his head, telling him I wasn't his anymore. And even then, he tried.

I look back and hate to think what I did to him. I hate to think what I thought of him when he put down his weapon and cried in front of me, something I'd never seen him do. I thought he was pathetic, an insult to his own name. I thought he'd just won so many times he couldn't take defeat.

But for the first time in his life, Britain stopped fighting. He knelt on the ground in front of me, his civility gone, his facade gone. His brother gone.

Again, his mind took a long time to catch up with what his heart had done. His love – the love I didn't recognise – for me meant he couldn't pull the trigger like he would have done with any other country. He gave up his fight for me. He knelt; he willingly let go of his place at the top of the heap. But he didn't understand.

Neither of us understood. We parted ways; he tried to find a replacement, while I had my own problems to deal with, making my own way in the world, deciding on my own rules. His empire continued, but he'd lost me and his desperate hunger for contentment grew even stronger. His mania turned to other things. Machines and smoke filled his mind, he took over a quarter of the world, he started throwing everything he had at his enemies, and I didn't care. I still thought he was pathetic, with his meaningless greed.

It was 1914 before any suggestion of the deep impact that my rebellion had had on him made any difference to his actions other than furthering his desperation. Even then, declaring war on Germany for the sake of Belgium, he took pleasure in the violence in which he was participating, eventually to the point where he returned to fighting for his own gains. Whatever the reason, by then he didn't really care what happened to him as long as he kept fighting. I still remember the moment I finally brought myself to find him again, seeing him staggering, bleeding, through the ruins of Europe, still determined to destroy his equally wounded enemy. I remember seeing the light in his eyes spark as he saw me, some sort of hope igniting in him.

It was only then that I went against my principles in the hope of achieving some sort of peace of mind, for Europe, but especially for him. I fought for my brother again.

Twice. I'd have done it a third if he'd asked me, a fourth, even. As many times as it took. It wasn't the same as before – we weren't friends, we hardly spoke except for war plans – but it didn't matter. In that moment I had realised exactly what had happened back when I had rebelled, exactly how deep a crack I'd made in that stone cold heart of his. His changes were subconscious, but he wasn't making any gains by what he was doing. His fight was for the safety of his allies. His motivation was trying to regain what he'd lost when I left him. His sacrifice was his whole empire, his whole family, gone in an instant to prove his integrity. He really had given up his place at the top of the world to me, recognising the happiness I had in my freedom and understanding that peace belonged in the highest place. I no longer aspired to his place in the world; he aspired to mine. He just didn't know how to get there.

By the time the second war had ended, I think he had worked it out as well.

At least, that was the only meaning I've ever been able to find behind the look in his eyes as he caught me after a meeting and said, "Thank you."

It took me a second to react.

"Um... sure, no problem."

He walked away without another word.

Trouble was still brewing, and I had another war on my hands within a few years. My brother's empire had broken apart, his role as king of the world now gone. My fellow colonies took their own independence, leaving him just as I had done. The second Roman Empire had ended – to the others, it had fallen. To me and him, it had simply been given up. Russia was trying to become the third Empire, and some nations thought I was doing the same. I wasn't.

I was fighting for freedom. It's the only thing I've ever done. My own freedom, my brother's freedom, the freedom of other countries. It's the quickest way to peace, to some sort of contentment in a world which was never meant for suffering. And the only reason I was able to understand that is because he let me see the madness and discontent in the heart of a conqueror.

The insanity is still there, just in a more flying mint bunny-type shape than before. His civility was never a mask, it was the only hint to the outside world of his longing for internal peace. And while he still seems like a cynical, angry, calculating bastard, it's nothing to what he was once. Nothing to what he could still be if he took it up again. But I know he won't.

And I know that no matter how much he mocks me, how much he tells me that he despises me, no matter how much he refuses to talk about the revolution or the loss of his empire because what I and my siblings did still hurts him too much, he loves me. He will fight for me with the same desperation he had when he first lost me. Despite all his complexity, he's ultimately simple. He refused to kill someone he loved, knelt to the hope of a better future, and walked away from his conquest.

He has always been, and will forever be, my closest ally.

And even if the whole world is screaming for his blood, I will be standing right beside him.


End file.
